The Hajong people are an ethnic group from Northeast India and northern parts of Bangladesh. The majority of the Hajongs are settled in India and are predominantly rice-farmers. They are said to have brought wet-field cultivation to Garo Hills, where the Garo people used slash and burn method of agriculture. Hajong have the status of a Scheduled Tribe in India and they are the fourth largest tribal ethnicity in the Indian state of Meghalaya.
Origin
The Hajongs belong to the Bodo-Kachari group of tribes, whose ancestors migrated from Tibet to the Brahmaputra Valley in the ancient past, from where they spread in multiple directions. The Hajongs have no recorded history and whatever historical references available are in the form of legends, folktales and traditional beliefs. The Hajongs believe that their ancestral land was in Hajo area of present-day Nalbari district of Assam. The meaning of 'Hajong' can thus be comprehended as 'descendants of Hajo'. It is believed that twelve thousand Hajongs fled Hajo and had settled in the northern foothills of Garo Hills; from there, they gradually extended their settlement in the southeastern direction, along the foothills of Garo Hills and Khasi-Jaintia Hills. This traditional belief about their migration is corroborated in many of the folktales of the Hajongs. According to a legend prevalent among the Hajongs, they are Suryawanshi (Hajong:Surjobungsi) or the descendants of Surjodyao or Bila (the Sun god) and are Kshatriyas. It is reported that, in 1939, the Hajongs organised a Kshatriya Sanmelan for the welfare of the community and for enforcing observation of their traditions.
Geographical distribution
It is believed that the original heartland of the Hajongs in Garo hills was in the area lying mostly along with the Northeast and Southwest foothills of Garo Hills and part of the southern foothills of Khasi and Jaintia Hills. This wide and plain switch of land in the foothills, half encircling these two hills falls partly in present-day Goalpara district of Assam, partly in Garo Hills district of Meghalaya and partly in Mymensingh and Syhlet districts of Bangladesh.
According to folklore, the Hajong habitation was said to have started from a small Hajong village called Hwârkuna Situated in the northeastern corner of the foothills of Garo Hills and ended at anither small Hajong village called Jumakuna situated in the southeastern corner of the foothills of Jaintia Hills. The Hajong habitation was said to have extended only this far and no further beyond these two villages in either direction. Today, the Hajongs are spread out across northeast India and Bangladesh with the majority of the population on the India side of the border.
In India, Hajongs are found in both the Garo and Khasi Hills of Meghalaya, largely along the South-West Garo Hills District of Meghalaya and Bangladesh border. They also live in the Dhubri and Goalpara districts of lower Assam, Dhemaji and other districts of upper Assam into Arunachal Pradesh. In Bangladesh, Hajongs are found in the northern Dhaka division, although there are unconfirmed reports of some Hajong living in Chittagong division. The narrow strip of borderland that stretches from Sherpur district in the west as far Sunamganj district in the east can be considered the southern outpost of the greater Hajong community.
Language
Hajong is classified as an Indo-Aryan language. It has some degree of similarity with Assamese and Bengali, the two IA languages spoken in the region. At the same time, certain grammatical similarities such as case marking can be found between Hajong and some Tibeto-Burman languages spoken in the same geographic location. The Hajong language was originally a Tibeto-Burman language, but is now considered an Indo-Aryan language with Tibeto-Burman roots. It is spoken by more than 175,000 ethnic Hajongs. It is written in the Eastern Nagari script. It has a lot of Sanskrit loanwords. Hajong phonology has an extra vowel /ɯ/ which is not present in other Indo-Aryan languages, but is typical for the Tibeto-Burman family. The phonology of Hajong has 23 consonant phonemes, 8 vowel phonemes, and 2 approximants which have some characteristics of consonants namely /w/ and /j/ which act as diphthongs, it includes vowel harmony and the devoicing of final consonants. According to one of the several hypotheses, the Hajong language has Sino-Tibetan origins that was relexified by Old Bengali; and some hints of its origin may be shown through the case markers in Hajong.